October 13, 2021
By: Dwayne Page
Returning to his roots!
The congregation of Elizabeth Chapel Baptist Church recently welcomed the arrival of a new minister.
Scott Pack, a native of Cannon County with ties to DeKalb County, became pastor of the church only a few weeks ago but already for him its beginning to feel like home. In some ways it is home. Pack’s grandparents Amon and Barbara Page Pack were from the Holmes Creek community and grew up attending Elizabeth Chapel. Scott himself occasionally visited the church as a child with his parents Allan and Sharon Pack usually during homecoming services. Still, it was a bit of a surprise when the call came from the church’s search committee asking him to take the position.
Although he did not know it at the time, members of the committee had been watching him during online services from the Cornerstone Baptist Church in McMinnville where Pack served as interim pastor before graduating from Southwestern Seminary with a Master of Divinity degree. After that graduation ceremony a member of the Elizabeth Chapel search committee, Laura Reed approached him and asked if he was related to the Pack families in the Smithville area. For Pack, it was the Lord’s divine way of directing his path
The first year and a half of his three years in the ministry, Pack was pastor at a Brazilian Church in Arlington Texas.
“I felt the Lord calling me to pastor when I was about 20 and I surrendered to the call. I went out to Texas to study at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. My wife is Brazilian so we were in the Brazilian Church and they called me to pastor them so I did that for a year and a half before becoming interim pastor at Cornerstone,” said Pack.
Pack and his wife Gabriela have been married for 11 years and are the parents of four children, Ana, Samuel, Benjamin, and Maria. Pack met Gabriela while on a mission trip to Brazil.
“I was attending Lakewood Baptist Church in Coffee County when I took my first mission trip to Brazil to do evangelism work. The Holy Spirit just spoke to me and said you need to go on that trip. That was when I was 17 right after my junior year in high school. It was a wonderful experience. I got to see people come to know Christ. The next year I went back and it was on that second trip that I met Gabriela. I can still remember the way it felt when I first saw her. She was beautiful but there was something about her spirit that was different. It really was love at first sight and at first spirit. After that trip we didn’t see each other in person again for another four years. We wrote each other and used Skype to communicate. I eventually went back and visited her and we later got engaged and married,” said Pack.
The Pack’s currently reside in Woodbury.
Asked about his vision for Elizabeth Chapel, Pack said he would like to see the church grow more in terms of evangelism and discipleship to “reach more people who are not usually in church”.
To learn more about the church visit https://www.elizabethchapel.org/